Part of the fun of chasing rare old speakers and studying their history is that once you think you've seen it all, something new and mind blowing suddenly appears.
My friend Larry Storey, vintage audio hunter/gatherer/rescue expert extraordinaire, found this very significant loudspeaker yesterday. It is a Lansing Monitor 500A, similar to my 500A except for the use of permanent magnet drivers. The story of my 500A, which was also found by Larry back in 2000, can be found here:
http://www.audioheritage.org/html/pe...ives/found.htm
The Lansing Monitors were introduced in early 1936, and were built in various forms into the mid to late 1940s Altec era. The basic recipe was a folded W style bass horn (miniaturized Shearer) with one or two woofers, 500Hz. multicellular horn with large format compression driver and 500Hz. dividing network. Mine is an early one, based on low serial number on the 284 driver, early style multicellular horn and its mention in the Lansing Bulletin, which would have been printed by late 1936 or early 1937.
The Lansing Monitors are extremely rare; I've only known of the existence of about a half dozen of them in the modern era. This one is just off the charts rare, as it uses permanent magnet drivers that we didn't know existed at the time this speaker was apparently manufactured. I would peg the date of manufacture as likely 1936 or 1937 due to the great similarity to my 500A, the early Shearer style dividing network and the early style multicellular horn, which was only built for the first year or two to my knowledge.
The high frequency driver is a model 384, serial number 102. It is the p.m. equivalent of the 284 field coil driver, and uses an outer ring magnet design. This is why the label is attached to the rear cover instead of the side; they didn't want to drill and rivet into the magnet. We have not seen this style of rear cover before, with voice coil leads being dressed out the side. The voice coil terminals could not be installed on the top plate like the 284 due to the permanent magnet design. This is the first evidence we have of the 384 model, although there is documentation of later 384B and 387 large format p.m. drivers.
Remember the Salon Iconic that peahix found not long ago and sold on ebay? It was manufactured in 1940 and used the same woofer with monster permanent magnet, model 1518. We had never seen this woofer prior to the appearance of the Salon, though it is described in the literature. The 1518 sold for more than double the price of the 415, its field coil equivalent.
http://audioheritage.org/vbulletin/s...t=salon+iconic
Anyway, here are some pictures of Larry's incredible find. It appears to have been hung upside down originally, just like my 500A.
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Originally Posted by Steve Schell
